Tarot for Tara

Ten of cups

We overflow

There is family here and joy

He is the sway in your hips

And the whirl of your hurricane heart upward burst forth into a rainbow

Some presence you have never had before,

Your yes to life

The hanged man

Is this not what we are here to learn?

How to be and hang

How to glow, at peace in a moment pregnant with possibilities

(Look upside down! See how we dance!
How we tree our way into breaths

We are tall for the coming sapling

Heart open, chest broad, in the now)

Six of wands

A victory

Health and a crowd around you

A tribe, your tribe to wave you forward

Keep them near, honor their love

For you and for this new life

They buoy you up

Nine of swords

What keeps you up at night

What good life is worth staying awake for

What tiny-lung caterwaul says you

You and you, the protector and the light

No better cause for worry, this Lilliputian miracle

Nine of pentacles

Now in a garden replete with growth

Redolent in the overflow of a toddling consequence

Perhaps there are snails

Perhaps some weights heavy on your shoulders

And perhaps the garden is not unencumbered as it once seemed

But the truth of beautiful harvest remains

When you have brought forth life

What you reap is love

And love and love

Gloria, In Excelsis

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.”

"In cases such as these, a good memory is unpardonable"

I have seen Pride and Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth, approximately eleventy-zillion times, give or take.

And not because it's dreamy to watch Darcy broodingly swim in a lake at his estate at Pemberly in a way that is totally extraneous to the plot but allows him to emerge from the lake disarmingly dripping and attractive.
No.
Rather, I've seen BBCP&P so many times because it is the best way to spend time with my grandmother. Two decades ago, she began to go blind, and decided to to re-watch movies she had seen before so that she could still see the movie in her mind's eye, if not on the screen, and like a homing pigeon, she always returns to Pride and Prejudice.

So for many years now, if I wanted to chill with grandma, it meant watching this movie over and over again, to the point that I see your ability to quote scenes from The Princess Bride or Napoleon Dynamite, and raise you the entire 6-hour BBC mini-series adaptation of Jane Austen's most popular novel.

We watch Darcy scorn Elizabeth, and she says, "Oh he's proud, but just you wait."
She knows that everyone who is proud eventually gets taken down
We don't get to say how
Sometimes the eyes go first, sometimes the bowels
Sometimes the memory.

She forgets now.
Pieces of her life get wrenched out like pulled teeth
They're pulling all her bottom teeth out next week.
She'll be under anesthetic when it happens but when she wakes up there will be throbbing holes where bones used to be.

She asks if I remember my uncle, her son who died when I was twenty. If I remember Russell, her second husband who died when I was eleven. If I remember my grandfather, who died just after my mother told him she was pregnant with me.

I tell her I will remember.

I will remember that she was a Sicilian matriarch. A New Orleanian survivor.
And when she dies I do not expect to inherit anything but this:
I make gumbo the way my father does, the way she taught him

First you make a roux
And you stay with it. Don't leave. Stay and stir. Watch it.
Don't leave or it will burn.
Don't leave.
Don't leave.
She is going anyway. I cannot stop her.

So as she goes, I will let my memory become selective too. I will forget how she shat herself at the airport and I tried to clean her up without making her feel embarrassed. I will forget that I never wanted to know whether or not she had lost most of her pubic hair. I will forget that there are so many things now she can't remember. I will forget how scared I am of losing her

I will remember her calling me her baby. I will remember her humming Sinatra. I will remember her saying a rosary for me.

And anyway, in cases such as this, a good memory is unpardonable.

Little Lullaby for JackieRose

The whistling dove tucks her head in her wing
In the morning she'll rise up and fly and sing
She'll meet all the gifts the new day will bring
But for now she tucks her head in her wing

The lion cub begins to snore
In the morning he'll rise up and pounce and roar
He'll prowl as he never has prowled before
But for now the lion cub starts to snore

The arctic fox nestles in her burrow
In the morning she'll rise up and stretch and go
She'll bound and she'll leap in the pillowy snow
But for now she nestles in her burrow

The gosling sleeps under his mother's breast
In the morning he'll rise up and leave the nest
He'll peep and he'll flap and he'll swim with the rest
But for now he sleeps 'neath his mother's breast

And you, my love, are tucked in tight
In the morning you'll rise up and greet the light
You will play and grow be happy and bright
But for now it's time to say goodnight

Upon My Return

Hey, denizens of the ballroom,
How's it going?
I haven't talked to you in a minute
More than a minute
It's sloppy language, I know
And that's one of the cardinal sins, sloppy language
Maybe not as cardinal as wasting words
Which is what I'm doing now...
I'm stalling...

I asked for this microphone, and someone lent it to me
Along with three minutes
Three minutes to speak my heart
My sandpaper knees knocking about so that I can turn
To you, unlace my stitches and say
"Here is where I have been hurt"
or "Here is my dream for how things could be"

And it's possible. You beautiful body of strangers
You listen, take in, snap or give scores
Hiss only in the case of true jackassery
But mostly you uphold

And so I got to thinking I was good at opening up
Because I have told you secrets
About the important things in my life
Like question of God, my fear of fat,
my unquenchable baby fever,
and my lust for musicians...
The important things...about how I am trying to be better at being a human.

I thought if I showed you my weak spots
It meant I could claim confidence, like
I AM AMAZING AT VULNERABILITY.
Eat it, Brene Brown!

But I'm seeing this girl,
Have been for a minute, ok more than a minute
And she's really talented at being a human
And one night we're having a conversation about biting
--you see, I'm a biter
And I don't just mean for sexy times
I mean, I bite often, as a way to say hello or I missed you
It's actually pretty normal, I read online how
there is evolutionary cause for our urge to bite things that are cute--
Anyway, I'm stalling. We're talking
And she says, "I trust you."

Like it's easy
Like falling.

And I want to say, "Is that a good idea?
Do you know how many times a day I get lost driving places I've been before?"
Getting lost is like falling. It's easy.

But trust...to open up to a person who is inches away
Without blinding stage lights or the expectation of snaps
To tell someone whose breath heats my cheeks
That I'm afraid of infertility or that when I hear Catholic hymns I ache like
There's a dull thud in my teeth and a heavy door closing
The kind made of old wood and carved with images of saints
How I believe she is a miracle
And that she loves me is a miracle
And how strange it is to be a person who doesn't really believe in God
but does believe in miracles

To say those things is like falling in a different way
Like falling in.

And I think I'm here tonight because, comparatively, it's easy
To give away pieces of myself to strangers
To pretend we know each other, only to go home in separate cars
is easy.

So I'll consider it practice.
I will say things to you until it's less scary
to say them to her.
I am a work in progress. I am often afraid.
But I'm here. I trust you.
It's like falling in.